


No Place Like a Holding Cell

by JG Firefly (Phoenix_Call)



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Holding Cell, Twitter Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 00:42:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17273879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_Call/pseuds/JG%20Firefly
Summary: Carmilla is familiar with the holding cells at Silas PD. She's less familiar with having company... especially the sort of company that looks like her personal Ghost of High School Past.





	No Place Like a Holding Cell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenkb](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Serenkb).



> For @Serenkb from Twitter, from their prompt: "They're both thrown into the same holding cell for the night for each independently getting into fights earlier in the night. They both can get pretty feisty when they're mad."
> 
> I made a few tweaks, but I hope you'll enjoy it!

“Dammit, Kirsch, I’m sober! My car is a block away. Just let me go home.”

From his desk across the room, the man-puppy at least had the decency to look sympathetic. “Dude, you know I can’t. This is like… an important shift for me. And the sheriff totally expects you to be here until someone legit signs you out.”

“I’m not a fucking book at the library,” she snarled, her hands waving through the bars. Sometimes she appreciated his candor, and his respect for the job, but tonight she really just wanted to return to her apartment, alone, and pretend this night had never happened.

Besides, there was no one coming to get her. And Kirsch knew that.

His brow wrinkled all the way up, “I can get you, like, a candy bar? Maybe?”

Before she could spit out a fitting reply—something along the lines of _does that come with a rusty file or a digging spoon?—_ his radio crackled to life. His perfectly pressed uniform bulged at the seams as he lunged forward to grab it, nearly toppling his chair in the process.

Carmilla would have laughed, had she not been so interested in what the static-filled voice was saying.

“Got another 240 at Charlie’s. 10-15.”

Kirsch shot her a look. “Something in the water, huh?” he suggested, before calling back his 10-4 and requesting arrival details.

“It’s the holidays,” Carmilla said, when he was done and she had properly reclaimed her bench and sprawled face-up across it. There were new water stains to study, since her last visit, and she didn’t plan to give up her bed to whoever the new arrival would be.

“What?”

“That’s what’s in the water,” she said, without looking at him.

It took no more than ten minutes for the door to bang open, not that Carmilla had expected anything less. Silas was a small town—one that only seemed to get smaller with each passing day—and Charlie’s was practically a stone’s throw away from the station.

“Whoa! Little nerd!”

Kirsch’s chair squealed out from his desk, and this time actually toppled, even if he wasn’t in it. Carmilla rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

“She’s in _custody_ , Kirsch,” Theo Straka drawled, “You can’t hug the prisoners.”

Keys jangled into the lock, and at last Carmilla rolled her neck to the side to see the latest addition to the drunk tank. Theo pulled the door shut, sealing it firmly and going so far as to test the lock—despite the clear lack of escape plans—but that wasn’t what made Carmilla’s eyes go wide.

Two hours ago, she had been certain that Mel had spiked her drink with absinthe. It had been the only explanation for the visage of Laura Hollis that had slipped past her, as golden hued and brilliant as any angel, and the only reason she had spilled her last beer.

And yet, here she was: Laura Hollis, in the flesh, flushed red with alcohol and traces of embarrassment, and nursing her own set of damaged fingers.

“Shit,” the hallucination of Laura slurred out, taking a step to the side and nearly going down. She caught herself on the bars, and then spent an extended moment studying the metal before her head snapped in Carmilla’s direction. “Is this prison?”

Kirsch, still standing outside the door, was also gaping.

“Dude, you’re in town?”

Laura turned in a painstakingly slow pirouette, blinking far too much for someone completely in control of their motor functions.

“I’m in _jail.”_

“It’s a holding cell.” The answer—automatic and edged with a scoff—earned her the other girl’s attention at once, and this time it held. Carmilla swallowed and took the full advantage of her sobriety in hand, sitting upright and giving the other girl a proper once-over. “Looks like you’ve had an… interesting night, cupcake.”

Laura blinked again, drawn out and uncertain, and there was a brow furrow to go with it.

“Carmilla,” she said at last. The name looked like it tasted off, curling her lips in a way it never used to. _“Carmilla_ called me that.”

“The one and only,” Carmilla agreed, and the smile she put on her lips was only halfway forced.

“Oh _man,”_ breathed out Kirsch. Theo had left, but the man-puppy was still hovering outside the cell, eyes darting between them like he had just become an avid fan of tennis.

Carmilla was reminded, in abrupt, gut-wrenching fashion, that he knew far too much about her personal life… and that perhaps her first goal of the new year should be to stop drinking with him on his nights off.

“Don’t you have paperwork to be doing?” she snipped.

His eyes switched back and forth once more, before he caught the full strength of her glare and seemed to realize himself.

“Wha—oh! Yeah. I, uh, yeah. Paperwork. In fact, I need to go and get some… files. From the filing room.”

Laura was still focused on Carmilla, as though having similar thoughts about the reality of their situation, and she barely seemed to notice Kirsch’s ramblings.

He shot Carmilla a pointless thumbs-up and promptly bolted from the room.

“You really got arrested,” Laura said. She was still frowning, forehead scrunched in a way Carmilla wished she did not find quite so adorable.

“What?”

“They kicked you out. But I didn’t think they—I didn’t realize there were like, _handcuffs.”_ She rubbed her own wrists, abruptly, glancing down as if expecting her own to still be there, rather than removed as they had been upon her arrival. “Like… _real_ handcuffs…”

“As opposed to fake ones?” Carmilla asked, raising an eyebrow. “Do you prefer the fuzzy kind, then?”

Laura pouted. “You’re being inapper… inpropra…” she stomped a foot, not unlike a toddler, and huffed in frustration. “Gross! You’re being...”

“Myself?”

Laura fell silent, and, with a sigh, Carmilla shifted to the side and patted the bench.

“You’re gonna fall over,” she said, by way of explanation. “And then you’ll probably do some real damage to that head of yours.”

“I will not,” Laura grumbled, but she came and sat, anyway.

It was somehow less bizarre, to have her this close. From a distance, it felt as though she could vanish in a second, like she could be made up entirely in Carmilla’s head—even with the likes of Kirsch sharing the vision. Now, with her only inches away, Carmilla could feel the warmth humming off of her, could see the frizzes in her hair and the new laughter lines around her eyes. She could even pick out those little flecks of gold amidst the hazel, when Laura turned to look at her properly, and Carmilla’s throat was immediately too dry to ask any of the questions that had been lining up since her arrival.

Laura asked one, instead.

“Are you always here?”

Carmilla stared, her mouth working without words. “In holding?” she managed, at long last. “Think highly of me, don’t you?”

“Silas,” Laura corrected, her expression barely changing but to tilt her head slightly to the side. “Are you just… always here?”

“I live here. So… yeah.”

Laura fell back into the cinderblocks behind her, letting her head droop as her frown deepened. “You weren’t, though,” she mumbled, and, before Carmilla could puzzle through that, Laura had winced and held up her hand, rubbing at the purpled knuckles.

“Here,” Carmilla sighed, reaching out. Laura pulled away for a second, suspicion coloring her face, but, at a mere wiggle of Carmilla’s fingers, she caved.

Delicately, and with her own knuckles protesting, Carmilla prodded at the injuries. There was no blood, so clearly she knew more what she was doing with her punches than Carmilla did, but she had used enough force that she was definitely going to be sore.

“I think you’ll live.” She met Laura’s gaze, their faces much closer than they had been a moment ago, and her words caught for a second before she continued, “Just not as sure about the other guy… especially if you’re still doing that intensive karate.”

“Krav Maga.”

“Right.”

Trust Laura to be coherent about _that_ , of all things.

She was still holding her hand, and she released it as quickly as she dared, clasping her own in her lap to stave off the loss of Laura’s warmth.

“Are you going to call someone to get you?” she asked hurriedly, shoving a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the payphone. It was old, and crappy, but it functioned fine enough, and Kirsch had left a handful of quarters on the broken shelf.

Carmilla might not have a way out of here, but surely Laura did. The gingers had moved back to the area after college, even if Laura hadn’t, and Carmilla knew they were still in touch. On the rare occasion that she ran into one of them—LaFontaine at a coffee shop a few towns over; Perry in the cleaning supplies aisle at the Walmart; even Danny, once, in passing at the mall—she would allow them to update her on their lives in exchange for even a small nugget of information about where Laura was, or what Laura was doing.

If her latest information was correct, Laura was supposed to be in Vermont with her father for the holidays, and otherwise in Europe working on her latest articles for the international section in the _Times_.

She was not most certainly not supposed to be in Silas.

“Oh,” Laura said, eyes widening. She shifted them away, studying the room through the bars, even though it surely was as familiar to her as it was to Carmilla. The only things that had really changed since her father had been Sheriff were the couch cushions. “Uh, I’m good.”

Carmilla shrugged, “I suppose the cavalry will come bursting in any minute, then?”

“Cavalry?”

“LaF, Perry, Danny,” Carmilla listed off, ticking her fingers up for added effect. She quirked an eyebrow. “They must be panicked by now… Laura Hollis, hauled off by the law, and all that. I don’t recall you so much as jaywalking, when we were kids.”

Laura huffed, crossing her arms with a dramatic flair. “I had a good reason.”

Carmilla’s witty retort fell dead on the back of her tongue, swallowed by memory, instead. The words were so intrinsically _Laura_ , were so much a part of what Carmilla considered the _then_ of her life—the world that had fallen away for the _now_ —that she had nearly forgotten them.

Now, she remembered one golden summer evening in particular, and Laura’s fist thrown back in a punch probably not unlike the one she had thrown tonight. Her aim had never been something to question… and neither, back then, had been her friendship with Carmilla.

“You always did,” she agreed, quietly. She turned back towards the doors, and the room Kirsch had conveniently abandoned. “So. Where’s the squad?”

A flush had crept up Laura’s neck and colored her cheeks, by the time Carmilla turned to eye her directly. She fiddled with the sleeves of her sweater, which were long enough to tuck over her hands.

“They might not know I’m in town?” she hummed out, pressing her lips thin with the admission and staring pointedly at the floor.

Carmilla’s eyebrows reached for her hairline.

Sherman Hollis was in Vermont. He had moved there during the winter of Laura’s junior year at Northeastern, and there had been no reason for her to return to Maine, once he was gone, except to see her friends.

She had never informed Carmilla of these visits, never planned to catch up, never looked anything less than uncomfortable on the occasions when they bumped into one another during her stays. The only time they had truly spoken had been three years prior, when Laura had made the trip alone, to lay a wreath on her mother’s grave for the holidays, and Carmilla had found herself there for all-too-similar reasons.

It had been an _I’m sorry_ of sympathy, not apology—on both sides.

“Sneaking around for a reason?” asked Carmilla.

“It wasn’t _sneaking.”_ Carmilla blinked at the lie, and Laura sighed, “Okay, a _little_ sneaking, but—I don’t know, you’re hard to read. S’annoying.”

“I’m… hard to read?”

This time, it was Laura who scoffed. “Obviously.”

She wasn’t wrong, of course. Carmilla had always prided herself on the walls she put up, on the fact that she was the _War and Peace_ to Laura’s _Winnie the Pooh._

Still, Laura had seemed an avid fan of Tolstoy.

The other girl shoved a hand through her hair, which was more honey-blonde than the brunette of their high school years. Carmilla had first seen that shift on television, when Laura appeared in a segment for her story on poachers. She had been in Africa for some time, her skin toned gold, and Carmilla had not been able to tell if the highlights were natural or by choice, but they had stayed.

“I dunno,” Laura continued, when Carmilla’s silence lingered. “You just… I was really wrong, before. Like, wildly, off-the-walls _wrong_ … and it’s all like… back to the start.”

Carmilla swallowed, and broke the connection even as Laura’s eyes seemed to plead with her. She knew exactly what Laura meant by _wrong_ , and so she questioned the rest.

“What’s back to the start?”

“You,” Laura said. Her hands flailed a little, “You stopped making sense, and then the—the plan stopped making sense, and when I finally got a _new_ one you weren’t…” she stumbled to a halt, chewing on her lip and giving her head a little shake. “I’m very drunk.”

“Yes. Yes you are. But, I wasn’t _what_ , exactly?”

“Here.”

The way she looked at Carmilla, it was clear she was expected to understand this, and, when she did not, Laura groaned and leaned back once more, closing her eyes.

“Here,” she repeated. “If you _live_ here, why weren’t you here _last year?”_

Carmilla frowned, the gears turning until she caught hold of the right memory. “You mean New Year’s? Last year?” When Laura nodded, halfway pouting, Carmilla continued, “I was in Montreal for the long weekend. Mattie had just opened a new office and was throwing a little party, and she insisted.”

She was certain she had told people where she was. She had run into LaFontaine in the liquor store, not two days before the trip, and had been forced into sharing her plans for the holiday.

“Didn’t your friends tell you?”

Laura’s scowl returned, more childlike than ever, and she was forcibly avoiding eye contact by pulling away at a loose thread on her sweater like her life depended on it.

“Did they not know you were in town, then, either?”

Her scowl deepened. “They… knew.”

“But?”

“I didn’t ask about you.”

Though unsurprising, the words still bit straight to her heart.

“Do you ever?” she asked, her voice quieter than she intended, and a touch more bitter.

The scowl cleared, Laura’s head whipping up and her brows shaping her expression into one of bewilderment, instead.

“Of course I do.”

With a loud _“ouch!”_ and a stumble, Kirsch tripped his way up the slight ramp from the hallway to the archives, nearly sending the files in his arms flying in the process.

“Good news, little L!” he declared brightly, entirely unaware of what he had interrupted. His boots clomped across the hardwood. “Sheriff says Adley isn’t going to press charges.”

Carmilla’s mouth fell open, and Laura’s flush took over the whole of her face.

“You punched _Parker?”_

Kirsch answered for her, “Yeah, she hit him in the throat! Like, five hot seconds after you decked him, Karnstein.” He shook his head, “Rough night for a dude. But he’s like, not a bro.”

“Wait,” Laura sat up, her cheeks still red but her eyes narrowing with purpose, “He’s not charging Carmilla, either, right?”

At this, Kirsch winced. His gaze darted to Carmilla, “He’s, uh, talking to his lawyer in the morning?”

“But that’s ridiculous!” argued Laura. She was sitting upright, now, and looking far more sober than she had at any point in the last twenty minutes. “How can he go after just her, when we both hit him?”

“Do you… _want_ to go to court?”

“No, but that—that doesn’t mean it’s fair that she’s the one getting all… official, and stuff. Besides, he totally deserved it. It was like… like self-defense.” She turned on Carmilla, poking a finger in her direction, “You should plead self-defense.”

Carmilla blinked at her, mouth still open and words still sinking in.

“You saw what happened?”

“I—yeah.”

She fiddled with her sweater again, and the hem was surely a lost cause, at this point. Carmilla imagined it would be one on a list of many, for the things Laura was going to regret about tonight.

“I would have punched him, too, if he got in my face like that,” she mumbled.

“Dude, you _did_ punch him, too,” Kirsch reminded her, nodding sagely from the other side of the bars.

Carmilla frowned. “Why did you do that, anyway? He didn’t bother you, did he?”

She couldn’t imagine why he would have. There was nothing personal between them—as far as Carmilla knew, they had been distant in high school, with no real connections or grudges—and it wasn’t like Laura had gone and slept with his ex-girlfriend and then goaded him about it while drunk at a bar.

“No,” Laura muttered. “He was just… saying stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Unpleasant stuff,” she hedged, scrunching her nose before she reached up and scratched at it directly. “About… you.”

Carmilla didn’t know what to say to that. Of all the ‘good’ reasons she had imagined Laura might have for punching someone—and half of them involved insults against the likes of Harry Potter or Doctor Who—defending Carmilla had never achieved so much as an honorable mention.

“What?” she managed, at long last.

“She was totally protecting your honor,” Kirsch jumped to explain, nodding eagerly from the other side of the bars. “That’s a bro move, Hollis.”

Carmilla’s head was still spinning. First, Laura said ‘of course’ she asked her friends about how Carmilla was doing, and now she was saying she had gotten into an actual fight because someone had insulted Carmilla behind her back?

When Carmilla had made her decision, all those years ago, she had expected to be shunned for a lifetime. She had expected the distance, the awkwardness. She had known that their friendship would never go back to what it was, that she could not expect Christmas letters or check-ins, and that she certainly could not expect to see Laura ever again, once her dad moved out of town.

It had been for the best, though. There had never been a day when she had doubted that, because Laura was off across the globe, with her name on bylines, with her words changing the world. She was getting her dreams… and if there had been a _yes_ , all those years ago? If Carmilla had taken what she so desperately wanted?

They’d never have made it.

Slowly, she turned to Laura, and found herself startled once more, because the other girl was not staring at her shoes, or fiddling with her clothing. Instead, she was staring right back at Carmilla, her usually open expression somehow unreadable.

There was a faint chirp of noise, and it was enough, in the stillness, to make both of them jump. They turned to Kirsch, who lifted his wrist to click at his watch, his smile apologetic.

“That’s, uh, that’s my shift, actually.”

And, right on cue, the door clicked open to let in the stubble-faced Hascombe, already sipping from his coffee and looking like the world had wronged him.

“How drunk are you, now?” Carmilla asked, her voice dropping to a hush as Kirsch turned to greet his coworker and fill him on in the details.

Laura grimaced. “Less than I was. Enough to have a headache, at least…”

“Nothing will sober you up like a trip to the slammer, hm?”

Laura scoffed out a laugh, and the amusement colored its way into her eyes. It turned quickly to confusion, when Kirsch stepped over, working his way through a short ring of keys and jiggling the correct one into the lock. The cell door sprang open at a tug of his fingers.

“Ladies?”

Carmilla pushed slowly to her feet, her legs sore from lack of movement—and lack of general, everyday exercise. She held out a hand to Laura, and the other girl took it with a furrow of her eyebrows.

“What is this?”

“My version of the cavalry.”

She pulled Laura along by the hand, out of the cell, and accepted the bag of her belongings when it was offered. Her cell phone was on its final dregs of life, but her leather bracelets snapped back into their homes on her wrists without hesitation, and she took the extra moment to insert her earrings as well, while Laura sorted out her own things.

“I’ve never been arrested,” she said slowly, as she flipped through what appeared to be a few dozen text messages, her eyebrow raising by the minute. She looked back up at Carmilla. “You seem… more familiar with it?”

“With being arrested?” She glanced at Kirsch. “A little. _Usually_ for my benefit.”

“You’d think she’d have a better right hook, by now,” said Kirsch, giving her a solid elbow in the ribs. He waved a few sheets of paper at them, “Got you signed out… so, no more karate, okay?”

Laura’s nod was instantaneous, and wide-eyed.

Carmilla chuckled.

She led the way out of the station, letting Kirsch and Laura trail behind her, and shucked on her leather coat once they were in the parking lot. Kirsch, much to her chagrine—but to no surprise—followed her past his cruiser and onto the sidewalk.

(The fact that Laura tagged along, as well, was more than a welcome bonus.)

Charlie’s was abandoned, now, well-after the closing bell had been rung and the staff had cleared up. Carmilla’s was the only car in the lot, her scraped-up mustang lonely at the very back, and she made a bee-line to it, glancing as inconspicuously over her shoulder as she dared.

“Your choice, cupcake,” she said, once the keys were in one hand and the door handle in the other. The shadows cast a low light over Laura’s face, but her eyes looked as bright as ever.

“What?”

“Me or Kirsch.”

Laura wasn’t entirely sobered, though the chill of early morning air through her thin jacket seemed to be doing a fair job of speeding the process along. She glanced between them with dawning realization, mouth opening and closing.

“I’m, uh, I didn’t actually get a… hotel, or anything…”

Carmilla studied her, the breath catching like courage in the back of her throat, and then she let her head bob once, the nod too fast to be confident.

It was enough, though.

“I’m at Copper Hill, now. I’ve got a spare room and a pull-out.”

The suspicion, the sort that had been in her eyes when Carmilla reached for her injured hand, returned. It was at half-speed, diluted enough that Carmilla could see through the tattered edges, but it was still there.

“I’ve got water, saltines, and a clean bathroom. And, in the morning, I happen to know a nice coffee shop.”

Kirsch still hovered in the background, keys jingling loosely as he weighed them back and forth between oversized palms. He smiled reassuringly, when Laura turned his way, and Carmilla could have simultaneously hugged him and slapped him, when he added a thumbs-up to the mix.

“I like coffee,” Laura said, slowly, her gaze returning to lock onto Carmilla.

“I remember.”

She seemed very sober, abruptly; solidly Laura, behind that hazel gold. Without another word, she rounded the car, slipping into the passenger seat, and Carmilla barely offered a wave to Kirsch before she clambered inside as well.

She did not crank the engine, letting the silence hit them fully in the wake of the door shutting. When she turned to Laura, she found her already staring back.

“You can still go with Kirsch, you know,” she said carefully. One glance in the rear view told her he was taking his time. “I mean, it’s a man cave, but the couch isn’t bad.”

Laura shook her head, though, and, when it was clear she did not plan to say more, Carmilla turned the key and pulled them out onto the road.

It wasn’t a long drive back to her place. The majority of Silas was walkable, if one had that sort of energy and didn’t mind an abundance of hills. As such, there wasn’t a need for conversation, or for a search on the radio dial, because they were home before Carmilla could even imagine a way to start up a conversation.

“Casa de Karnstein,” she hummed, pulling into place.

They traipsed inside, and Carmilla dug out the promised water and saltines before she so much as removed her coat or tossed down her keys.

It was like the first time she had invited Laura over, when they were awkward teenagers and all there had been to see was the pristine kitchen her mother kept, and the poster-clad walls of her childhood bedroom. She had felt too large for the space, then, too aware of every movement and every word, and all of that rushed back over her in an instant, like no time had passed.

Her apartment was one of three, the old Copper Hill Inn converted into more permanent residences, and it was cozy but workable. The water didn’t stay hot, sure, but the WiFi came in okay, and she had extra blankets for when the furnace didn’t quite churn up enough for the night.

She got these gathered, as well, pulling out the couch in the spare room that she used as a photo studio of sorts, and hurried to find suitable things for Laura to sleep in, as well. She was not sure if the other girl had brought luggage, or where it might be, but she doubted it was the sort of thing they could deal with at the absurd hour they had reached on her microwave’s LED clock.

“Right. Um, I think that’s it, then… you’ve got your water, and the bed’s all set… you can change in the bathroom, there, and I’ll put out an extra toothbrush and whatnot. You’re welcome to all my shower products, or whatever you find in the kitchen—though there’s not much, sorry.”

Laura, who had said almost nothing since they had gotten in the car, was still in her perch on the edge of the couch-bed. The blankets already swathed her, tugged up for some warmth around her shoulders, and it was only the way her face twisted and rearranged her features that kept Carmilla hovering in the doorway.

Whatever she had to say, though, it did not seem likely to emerge anytime soon.

Carmilla backed from the room and reached for the door.

“Carm?”

Her feet froze in place, shoes scuffing slightly on the old wood floor.

“Yeah, cupcake?”

“I got arrested.”

She tried to hold back a smile, but hoped that the darkness would do the majority of the work for her. “Yeah. You did.”

“That was real.”

“And it’s over now, so you don’t have to worry.”

Sure, she might have a smudge on her record, but it was hardly the sort of thing that would follow her far. She was Laura Hollis—she was beyond such things.

“I’m at your apartment.”

“Also real, yeah,” she agreed, and this time there was a softness to her words, even if she did not mean to put it there. She shifted further from the room, one eye on the clock. “You should get some sleep, now, though.”

“Carm?”

She paused, again, waiting. Laura shifted on the mattress, the springs squeaking in protest, and then she sighed.

“I came to see you.”

The apartment was already a touch cold, but the very air in her lungs seemed to freeze over at the words. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the low breath she released came with a frosty cloud.

There was guessing, and then there was confirmation.

“There’s—there’s a lot more I want to tell you,” she continued, her voice shaking, “But I just… I needed to say that now, because I’m not sure I could, in the morning. And this way you’ll know.” Her expression shifted again, halfway frown and halfway hope, “I _needed_ you to know.”

There were a million things she could say to that, a million things she had only imagined herself saying in moments of deep, fantastical day dreaming.

Now, though, was not the time to be saying them.

She backed another pace from the room, let Laura fall a little further into the comforting shadows. The room had, suddenly, turned vastly warmer.

“Laura?” She paused a hair from closing the door, peering back through the crack. Laura’s head lifted. “There’s a lot I want to tell you, too.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Laura nodded.

Carmilla cleared her throat, flexing her fingers on the doorknob. “But, for now? I’m really glad you punched Parker Adley.”

Laura’s face broke into a full-on, sun-warming sort of smile.

“Yeah,” she said, “Yeah. Me too.”


End file.
